The Crystal Empire (10 page)

He began assisting her with her plan.

2

Thus passed many happy months for Frae Hethristochter and Sedrich Sedrichsohn, yet with a cloud hovering over them. She turned fourteen, he sixteen soon after. Together they labored with a loving will to escape her father’s intentions—and the foul-smelling clutches of yellow-eyed Oln Woeck.

For his part, Old Woeck seemed content to be patient. To be sure, the customary usages of the Helvetii were observed. He brought himself to frequent dinners at Hethri Parcifal’s house. He was at all times acco
m
panied by his pair of bodyguards—or whatever they were. In discussion of this, Sedrich told her of a long-ago conversation overheard at his f
a
ther’s forge. They’d been working, waiting as an order of leaf-springs slow-cooled in clay jackets.

The customer had waited with them.

“Aye,” Owaldsohn observed, testing the outer layer of clay with a bit of straw, “some Red Men be our friends. Others our foes.” He turned toward the customer, beetling his shaggy brows at the man. “’Tis a lo
n
gevous fe
l
low knows the difference.”

There was a disbelieving snort.

“There be but two sorts of Red Man, live ones and good ones,” i
n
sisted the customer, a captain-of-one-hundred from a village militia to the south. “The heathens believe not as we. Thus you’ve said of them yourself, son of Owald, red-handed Slayer of the Plains.”

Owaldsohn grimaced. He’d never liked the titles given him in honor of his crimson deeds. Looking at Sedrich rather than the captain, the blac
k
smith observed, “Nor often do neighbors, such as our good friend Hethri Parcifal, nor e’en your mother and I, at times.”

With a wink at his son, he turned to the other adult. “Yet we seem to get along, don’t we?”

Sedrich had doubts, as always, about Parcifal. He ran a hand through Willi’s coat, the fingers coming away oily.

Old Klem slumbered by the forge, snoring quietly.

The captain said in answer, “They worship neither God nor Go
d
dess!”

The blacksmith mused. “Thus ’tis said—wrongly. We be the he
a
thens in their eyes. Red Men worship powerful beings dwelling among the Great Blue Mountains, far to the west. I’ve not seen the like myself, mind you—the mountains I mean, for no one e’er sees any god—still, I’ve wi
t
nessed many a stranger sight.”

The militiaman looked first to Sedrich, then his father, lowering his voice. “I’ve heard it said that among the Red devils, some are wont to co
u
ple with other men.”

He gave an elaborate shiver, folding his arms as if this settled the matter of the Red Man’s fitness for extermination.

Owaldsohn tossed his son a look of concern. Some months would pass yet before Owaldsohn would acknowledge knowing of his son’s first afte
r
noon upon the estuary with Frae. Meanwhile, as with many fathers, even good ones like the son of Owald, his offspring’s readiness to hear about such things was a matter to him of embarrassed conjecture.

“Aye, ’tis rumored,” he said at last, his voice soft, “as are many things.”

Sedrich spoke up, his face reddening. “The same’s true among the Brotherhood, Father. Or thus I’ve heard whispered.”

“Aye, boy,” replied the captain with a sour grin, glancing round to see if they were overheard. “Such things are best
always
whispered.”

3

Now, months later, Frae wondered still about that conversation. It had ceased, of late, being a matter of idle speculation, for her or Sedrich. If such whisperings about the Brotherhood—or at least its local leader—were truthful, then she was confused.

There would come a day, no doubt, when Oln Woeck would be invi
t
ed to bathe with the Parcifals. Later yet...

Sedrich said he didn’t care if Oln Woeck buggered he-goats, obser
v
ing that the old man certainly smelled as if he did. Frae would have agreed had she been clearer about the meaning of the word “bugger.” To be sure, the Cultist never walked out without his retinue of underwitted, overmu
s
cled—yet somehow soft-looking—young men.

But if men were what Oln Woeck preferred to bed, what did he want with her?

Frae shuddered, imagining obscene rites in secret places.

Between sweet stolen moments together, Frae watched Sedrich sharpen his knife. At nights she often glimpsed him keeping watch upon her from the house next door.

Meantime, week by week, Sedrich’s land-boat began assuming its proper shape. He’d abandoned his experiments with the awkward do
g
cart, converting a rowboat contributed by his friend Old Roger the re
s
iner, one considered by its former owner to be beyond repair. For his purpose, its pa
r
chment-thin translucent fiberglass hull was perfect.

Wheels she’d watched him fashion, taking the lightest, strongest d
e
sign their people possessed—more trade secrets, this time from the wheelwright, Hillestadt—doubling the diameter, halving the thickness. This was necessary, he explained, determined by his boyhood exper
i
ences with the whee
l
barrow in his mother’s garden. The bigger a wheel, the bigger the bumps it could get over. The roads round their village were nothing to brag of, having taken their courses from the sheep dri
v
en over them for hundreds of years.

At the stern of the little craft, she helped him step his peculiar mast. Sedrich had fashioned it from resin-filled glass fabric, upon a long, greased hardwood mandrel. A hollow tube, in diameter the width of his palm and mounted in a block of laminated hardwood, he’d begun fas
h
ioning sails for it, using broad strips of cloth likewise stiffened with re
s
in. These rode u
p
on half a dozen booms, above and below, which, in turn, were fixed to lightweight steel rings encircling the mast.

They’d spent many a day together—days she ought to have spent i
n
doors with the housework—while he lathe-cut the cylindrical bearings which bore upon the mast, letting the rings turn without friction.

The machinery wasn’t complicated. Sedrich’s genius lay, Frae rea
l
ized, in having conceived such a thing in the first place. The lower ring sat upon a great hollow gear intermeshing with a worm—the middle section of the boat’s rear axle. The upper ring he raised and lowered by means of a line passing through the hollow mast.

There came at last a day when all he wanted for a first ride was a good stiff breeze. Such were plentiful where they lived, courtesy, each dawning and sunset, of the great ocean upon whose shores their little village sat. That first morning, thinking Frae home asleep, Sedrich pushed his craft to a bluff where a sandy pathway tipped over toward the water. From behind a dune she watched as he raised sails, waiting for the wind to begin turning them, for the gear to move the worm which moved the wheels. He glanced about, obviously worrying about Oln Woeck—among others—hoping, at this time of the morning, no one would see him. But for Frae, concealed by sand and seaside plant growth, no one did. It was a good thing for his pride, if not his safety.

Nothing happened.

The sails filled, straining the mast, tautening the guyline running from a sprit aft, slacking that which ran to the bow. Nothing else came to pass. Humiliated, he furled his sails, pushed his useless craft back to the shed. He sat down to think. As much beyond her years, in her own way, as her lover, Frae crept home unseen.

She never mentioned his first failure to him.

Next morning, Sedrich and Frae were in the same places at the same time. Realizing the feature which allowed him to lower the upper set of booms also allowed him to raise the lower set, he’d contrived a lever, with a spare bearing at its end, to lift the hollow gear from engagement with the worm. Freed of their load, the sails began to turn. Round and round they turned, faster and faster, the ends of the booms they strained against b
e
coming an indistinguishable blur.

He let the lever rise in his hand to engage the gear.

Disaster exploded round him as the course teeth struck the worm. Sedrich had expressed worries about the stresses his hollow gear would endure. He’d built well. It tore the worm from the gunwales, hurling it a hu
n
dred paces—just as Owaldsohn had once done with the boat-crank—showering splinters, metal-scrap, and fiberglass debris.

“Sedrich!”

This time, despite herself, Frae ran forward, driven by despair. He was too stunned to protest. Even together, they’d had to get his father’s help—Willi and Klem trotting along for the fun—to haul the ruin back to the shed.

With greater patience than most children his age, and with the pa
s
sage of much time, Sedrich improved upon his boat. Sometimes enthus
i
astic, sometimes afraid, Frae watched and helped. He learned that the lower and upper boom-rings must be somehow connected to keep the sails from twisting about the mast—which had been the second most obvious result of his most disastrous experiment. He contrived clever arrangements of gears, enabling him to engage the system without d
e
stroying it.

In the next trial he acquired a scar across his back which he’d carry to the grave.

Frae sewed him back together in the manner Ilse and the Sisterhood had taught her, stifling tears of sympathetic anguish and unfulfilled te
r
ror. This disaster taught him that he must redesign his steering system. Thus he abandoned the fifth wheel, learning to turn those upon each side of the craft at differing speeds.

This led to inventing a way to move the boat backward. On one good, windy afternoon, he’d driven it into a thicket whose spines he’d to e
n
dure to push the boat back by hand.

Frae watched all this with horrified fascination. As the machinery grew more reliable, she took rides with him as he labored to increase the land-boat’s speed.

Meanwhile, she’d encountered less difficulty putting off Oln Woeck than she’d thought possible. Sedrich said the old man was loath to take a bath of any kind, ritual or aughtwise. Time passed, and it was upon one such ride across the back roads of the village, at the exhilarating speed of a doddering oldster, that she explained to the one man she loved how in the winter she’d give birth to his child.

Sedrich slammed the clutch out, kicked the brake-lever, bringing the vehicle to a halt.

“Out of the boat!” he ordered.

Fear seized at the girl. “Sedrich, have I thus displeased you?”

Seeing he’d frightened her, Sedrich placed a gentle hand upon her arm. “No, dearest, I’m not displeased. But riding in this contraption is too da
n
gerous. I’ll not have you hurt yourself or lose our child.”

Frae fumed aloud, protesting.

Still, inside her was a warm glow—only partly because of their child-to-come.

“Is there not in Gehenna a lodging for those that are proud?”
—
The Koran, Sura
XXXIX

"W
ith me”—Ilse laughed—“’twas sardines.”

She folded the knitting in her lap and gazed up at the ceiling, her thoughts focused not upon flickering shadows thrown there by the great fireplace—where a kettle of sweet cider simmered—but seventeen years in her past.

“I’d thought tales women told of such yearnings were mere jest. Yet, I trow, had Owaldsohn not found a fishmonger willing to be awakened many a night, methinks I’d have died of longing.”

Beside her upon the divan, Frae laughed, taking another bite of the great red onion she’d just set upon an end-table.

“Aye,” remembered Owaldsohn, “people roundabout’ve been saying e’er since there’s something fishy about me!”

The blacksmith grinned, scratching black Klem between the ears. The dog turned blind adoring eyes upon his master. Owaldsohn, his legs ou
t
stretched before him, lounged in a broad-backed chair before the fire, d
o
ing nothing. It was for him a rare moment of relaxation. His long hair was nearly white, as was his furry chest, but muscles bulged with latent power where they were exposed by his sleeveless vest. Across the carved wooden arms of the chair lay
Murderer
in its wolfhide scabbard. He’d just finished oiling the great blade.

Frae’s blue eyes twinkled in the firelight, dimples showing. She, too, had knitting in her lap. Both women were preparing tiny clothing, i
m
pelled, no doubt, by the sight of the blizzard piling up outside to the halfway point of the night-blackened window.

“I don’t know what we’d have done, had we not come to you.” Sedrich nodded to his parents.